AFI-winning actor also sang for supper

When Michele Fawdon scored a rare double, winning best actress in the 1979 Australian Film Institute awards and Sammy awards, she enjoyed the celebration.

But acclaim for her riveting performance in Cathy's Child didn't pay the bills; on the way home from the AFI party, she was thinking of hotels and wine bars to approach with a solo singing act. Such is the life of most actors: occasional feasts and many lean spells.

Fawdon, who was born in Harrow, England, on December 15, 1947, knew about hard work and struggle from an early age: as a child in London she was stricken with polio ''and they sent me to ballet classes to help my gammy leg''.

Rehearsing with Barry Otto.

Her pilot father, John, and mother, Yvonne, brought Michele and her brothers, Tony and Paul, to Australia in 1964 and not long after, she began studies at the Ensemble Theatre in Sydney, making her professional debut in 1969.

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After being the best out-of-work actress in 1979, the tide turned. In 1980, Fawdon began a wonderfully productive decade on the Sydney stage, with regular appearances for the Nimrod Theatre and the Sydney Theatre Company. Colleagues at the Nimrod included John Bell, Colin Friels, Cathy Downes, Barry Otto, Deidre Rubenstein, Anna Volska and John Walton, often under the direction of Aubrey Mellor.

''She was so wonderful; she made it real and easy, so natural,'' Otto says. ''A leading lady in every way, beautiful on the outside and inside. When I think back, I realise how fortunate I was as an actor to perform opposite her - she became a very close friend ever since those days.''

Congratulated by John Hargraves in 1979.

And when it was someone else's turn in the spotlight, Fawdon sang for her supper. This took courage and energy: even her indefatigable agent, the late Bill Shanahan, couldn't help when it came to fronting hardbitten Sydney publicans, guitar in hand: ''Here I am, this is what I can do - what do you reckon?''

They knew nothing and cared less about Uncle Vanya or The Season at Sarsaparilla and may have missed the many television appearances, from Cop Shop and Young Ramsay to The Sullivans and A Country Practice. But they recognised an experienced performer who could really sing.

Fawdon would return to music periodically during the 1980s with a solo cabaret season at Kinselas, the Robyn Archer show The Pack of Women and with the successful cabaret group Pardon Me Boys.

A great singing voice did Fawdon no harm - her big break had come with the role of Mary Magdalene in the 1972 production and recording of Jesus Christ Superstar.

But her abiding love was acting and she worked hard to ''make it real and easy''. Coming out of the first read-through of Traitors, one of several plays by Stephen Sewell in which she appeared during the early 1980s, Fawdon confessed to a friend, ''There's heaps of politics and history and the others seemed to know all about it … I'm going to have to get to the library.''

Another show based on past stories - Manning Clark's History of Australia: The Musical - was pivotal for Fawdon. There were high hopes for the production in 1988 and Fawdon felt emboldened to make a deposit on a modest house in Sydney's Blue Mountains. Then the show flopped. But from misfortune arose something far more rewarding and resilient. Fawdon and fellow cast member Geoff Jenkins met and began a loving partnership that would last the rest of her life.

The birth of their daughter in 1995 deepened the bond and Lulu immediately became Fawdon's main focus.

However, she continued to perform on occasion, with a final television role in Killing Time only a year ago, and she was a star coach of youth theatre in Victoria's Yarra Valley after the family moved to Healesville.

The news that Fawdon was battling cancer saddened friends and colleagues throughout Australia, as was clear at the memorial service last Monday. It was no surprise for this last audience to hear that her distinctive energy, courage and love had persisted to the end, at the age of 63.

As her partner Geoff said: ''In Australia, roles for older actresses are few and far between, so Michele simply disappeared off the radar, her impressive body of work overlooked by the general public.

''But those who saw her in the Nimrod years; or remember her at the threshold of the Oz film industry years winning the AFI; or her beautiful, sexy and vulnerable - all at the same time - portrayal of Mary Magdalene, will never forget her.''

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